Facebook to Push Messenger in Bid for All Our Texts

Facebook has a clear image of how they want people to use its services, and that includes messaging, too. The social network company is ready to disable messaging in its current mobile apps and will soon require users to send their in-network private conversations through its Messenger app -- and that's just another step in the company's plans to take over all our messaging needs.

Facebook wants to own your mobile messaging

The transition to Facebook messaging in Messenger is only a couple weeks away in some European countries, and will expand to every other country around the world soon, according to The Verge. While users will still see the private message button in Facebook's mobile app, it will instead launch the Messenger app.

If you're a Facebook Paper fan, you'll still be able to send and receive private messages there -- at least for now. Windows Phone and tablet users can continue to message in the standard Facebook app, and low-end Android smartphones and tablets won't be forced into the change, either.

Forcing users to handle their private conversations through the Messenger app on their smartphones means they'll need multiple apps to interact on Facebook, which cuts down on convenience. The trade off is that Messenger's interface is better suited for the task than the standard Facebook app.

Facebook's stronger push into our messaging world makes sense considering the company recently bought the text messaging app WhatsApp for US$19 billion. The deal gave Facebook control over one of the largest SMS services, rivaling the daily message counts from all cell services providers combined.

Splitting private messaging out of the Facebook mobile app makes it very clear that the company wants to be our single stop for all messaging -- especially with WhatsApp in the mix. This is only one small step in Facebook's plans to take over all of our mobile messaging services.

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Facebook's next message could well be, "All your message are belong to us."